Life Science Entrepreneurship

Much of the progress in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease can be attributed to medical research in university labs. The Kauffman Foundation is identifying barriers that slow or deter life science innovators—the scientists in those labs—from getting their discoveries to the health care market. The Foundation’s Life Science Entrepreneurship program includes a host of initiatives designed to help life science entrepreneurs commercialize their research to benefit patients.

Initiatives

  • The Kauffman Foundation has begun working with several universities and other partners to better understand the complexities of innovation in entrepreneurship.

  • With the aim of cultivating entrepreneurs from among the postdoctoral community, the Kauffman Foundation’s Entrepreneur Postdoctoral Fellows program educates and trains scientist-founders who will create the high-growth technology companies of tomorrow.

  • Getting new treatments and cures to patients more quickly is the goal of a unique life science proof-of-concept model that draws support from higher education, philanthropy and industry experts to move medical innovations from the lab to the market.

  • The Kauffman Foundation provided the seed funding for the Institute for Pediatric innovation (IPI) to develop pediatric pharmaceutical reformulation initiatives that ultimately will result in products for follow-on commercial funding.

  • The Kansas City Life Sciences Fund, which received an initial contribution of $1.5 million from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, will enable donors across the region to help Kansas City recruit top medical research talent focusing especially on cures for cancer and diabetes.

  • Science Commons, an organization that designs strategies and tools for faster, more efficient Web-enabled scientific research, identifies unnecessary barriers to research, crafts policy guidelines and legal agreements to lower those barriers, and develops technology to make research data and materials easier to find and use.

  • /uploadedImages/ibridge(1).gifThis Kauffman Innovation Network, Inc. site provides access to university research and innovations to industry representatives, entrepreneurs, and other universities' researchers.

  • For medical innovation and treatment breakthroughs to reach patients, several stakeholder groups in the biomedical research and drug development worlds need to collaborate.

  • Connecting universities and industry to bring innovations to market Kauffman Foundation funded research indicates the importance of university industry collaborations as a driver of innovation.

  • Women Innovators
    View video.   

    The Kauffman Foundation is working to unleash the latent scientific wealth of female scientists, ensuring that they have the support networks and financial means to start businesses and advance their innovations.

Highlights

  • A convening of university scientist, former and current industry leaders, philanthropy, and government yielded deep-dive discussions regarding obstacles that must be immediately overcome if we are going to maintain and grow an industry that is a significant part of America’s GDP. Watch videos from the recent Translational Medicine Alliance Forum (TMAF) to understand the complexity of the problems and that leadership from all sectors must act upon to make changes to a broken system.

  • In an interview with Essinova, Lesa Mitchell, vice president of Advancing Innovation, pointed out potential barriers in the energy innovation market.

  • View video highlights from the Translational Medicine Alliance Forum 2009 held May 13 - 15. The forum brought together leaders from diverse fields interested in moving medical discoveries from the lab to the market.

Featured Resources

  • /uploadedImages/ibridge(1).gifThis Kauffman Innovation Network, Inc. site provides access to university research and innovations to industry representatives, entrepreneurs, and other universities' researchers.

  • Life sciences entrepreneurship possesses enormous potential for positively influencing health outcomes, improving quality of life, and making our economy stronger. Accelerating Technology Transfer and Commercialization in the Life and Health Sciences, the Final Report of the Kauffman Foundation's Panel of Advisors on the Life Sciences, explores ways to positively impact the proliferation of life sciences entrepreneurship.

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